Читать книгу Cheating Academic Integrity - Группа авторов - Страница 8

The last 30 years of research on academic integrity was vast, so we start at the beginning with two chapters that look at what we know about the prevalence of cheating during this time. First, in Trends in Plagiarism and Cheating Prevalence, Curtis makes an important declaration that may surprise our readers: The prevalence of cheating and plagiarism may have decreased, not increased, over the last 30 years. Curtis posits this may be a result of an increase in preventative measures taken by higher education institutions to enhance awareness of honor and integrity as well as skills in writing with integrity. Despite this good news, though, Curtis warns us that there are threats to integrity not yet realized, including rippling effects of the COVID pandemic and emerging technologies that will require substantive changes to forms of assessment less we be assessing how well machines, rather than our students, are demonstrating knowledge and abilities.

Lancaster picks up on Curtis' idea of “rippling effects” in his piece on contract cheating. Lancaster notes that while the term contract cheating was coined in 2006 and the behavior (arranging for someone else to complete your academic work) existed long before then, the explosion of research on contract cheating really did not occur until 2017. Since that time, our understanding of contract cheating has expanded exponentially. We now know, for example, that friends and families are the most likely providers of contract cheating services, and that remote instruction substantially increased the use of commercial contract cheating providers, especially amongst those that brand themselves as legitimate “homework help sites”. Lancaster foreshadows the challenging road ahead for academic integrity with the emerging technologies, such as automated writing and problem solving programs achievable through artificial intelligence. Like Curtis, Lancaster suggests that we must approach education very differently now and in the future from a learning perspective, but Lancaster also adds from a cybersecurity or safety perspective.

So, why are we here, still worrying about cheating and threats to the integrity of the academic enterprise after 30 years of research and hundreds of years of practice? The next two chapters try to answer that question.

First, readers are drawn into the psychological research on cheating as explored by Anderman and colleagues, particularly the research into academic motivation and academic integrity. This chapter reminds us that cheating is rather natural, a normal and expected phenomenon brought on by individual human factors like how and to what we attribute the cause of events (attribution theory), how our goal orientations influence our behaviors (achievement goal theory), how our behaviors are also shaped by what we see happening around us in our environment and by our peers (social‐cognitive theory), how our expectations for success or self‐efficacy influence our choices and behaviors (Situated Expectancy‐Value Theory), and finally, how our needs for autonomy, competence and belonging may dictate how we respond when these need resolution is frustrated (self‐determination theory). Anderman and colleagues’ review of the research educates us that while these theories explain why cheating is a normal outgrowth of education and development, the research and theories also help us identify solutions to minimize cheating and enhance integrity and learning. Readers interested in crafting their own research agendas to explore academic motivation and academic integrity are provided suggestions for moving the knowledge forward, and those interested in evolving their own teaching to enhance academic integrity may pick and choose from the nine practical suggestions offered in the chapter.

Next, Waltzer and Dahl use insights from psychological theories and research to posit a bold new hypothesis that students do perceive cheating as “wrong”, and they act in concordance with this moral judgement the majority of the time. However, when students do cheat, which the authors argue is rare, it happens for one of three psychological causes: 1) students perceive the behavior incorrectly based on the facts available to them; 2) students evaluate the act as cheating but still consider it a better option than an alternative; or 3) students decide the act is cheating but yet acceptable in some circumstances. Waltzer and Dahl use the literature of the last 30 years to level out support for their hypothesis as well as to suggest the resulting implications for research and practice. For example, when do students see cheating as acceptable or not? Do notions of cheating develop or change over time? What types of interventions could be designed to simultaneously target student perceptions, evaluations, and decisions about cheating? Which interventions—in the moment of the cheating decision—might be most effective in enhancing integrity?

This last question provides the perfect segue into the next chapter by Goldman, Carson and Simonds who focus on evidence‐based pedagogical practices to promote academic integrity and thus prevent cheating. Goldman and colleagues suggest that the complex interplay of forces shaping cheating can be best addressed not by surveillance or other forms of policing student conduct but by choosing and implementing high‐impact pedagogical practices. Such practices like problem‐based learning and service learning, not only engage and motivate students in their own learning but they help create a sense of belonging, meet students where they are at in their own lived experiences, and generate an inclusive classroom environment in which academic integrity will be more normative than cheating.

The idea that better pedagogy can address many of the causes of cheating is picked up in the next chapter by Harrison and Spencer, who focus on what we've learned about the relationship between pedagogy and cheating as a result of the pandemic and the abrupt move to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). After cogently arguing that ERT is not equivalent to online learning, Harrison and Spencer walk us through what the last 30 years have taught us about academic integrity and online learning. Particularly that we should not expect to combat cheating with blunt force objects like surveillance technology; we have seen during the pandemic era the many downsides of such a reliance. Instead, we should be embracing the good pedagogical techniques that we know work for enhancing learning and integrity regardless of instructional modality: 1) cultivating and maintaining socially presence, a sense of community, and social engagement if you will; 2) building and supporting cognitive presence, the purposeful intellectual engagement in the learning activities; and, 3) universally designing learning experiences to meet the full range of diversity that is in the classroom.

After this thorough exploration in six different chapters of the state of cheating in the twenty‐first century, as well as the causes and solutions for cheating, the authors of the next chapter wrap it up in a bow of sorts with a review of the most influential writings on academic integrity of the last 30 years. In 2012, the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) celebrated its twentieth anniversary by selecting and publishing an AI Reader which listed the 43 pieces of academic writing that were most influential in shaping research and practice. In 2022, ICAI is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and has, once again, selected the most influential pieces written on academic integrity between 2010–2020. Rogerson, Bertram Gallant, Cullen and Ives explore these 80+ pieces to call out the themes that seem to drive the research agenda, the lessons that have informed practice, and the ways in which research influenced, and were influenced by, cultural and contextual factors prevalent at the time. From this chapter, readers will be able to envision the next 30 years of an academic integrity research agenda along with the areas of practice on which we should be focusing now and into the future.